“What about him?” Felix thrusts a metal finger in Phobetor’s direction.
“He expects the sisters to attack him, right?” Napoleon asks.
“Yep,” I say. “Did Asha tell you about the prophecy?”
“She did,” he replies. “Can you teleport over to the target?”
“That doesn’t work on the battlefield,” Maxwell says. “It’s possible to teleport away, but then when you teleport back, it would be to the farthest edge of the field.”
“So it’s a lot like a normal battle,” Napoleon muses. “In that case, given that he’s expecting you, the last thing we want is for you to approach him head on.”
“But if we don’t, we can’t win,” Asha says, and I can tell she almost adds, “Assuming there’s any way we can win.”
“As dreamwalkers, you can change your appearances, can’t you?” Napoleon asks. “For what I have in mind, I’d want the sisters not to look like themselves. Two other dreamwalkers will pretend to be them.”
Asha and Kojo exchange a glance, and she morphs into him while he turns into her.
I make myself look like Valerian, and in his voice say, “We need one more me.”
The Escapist woman with noble features morphs into another Asha—which is the same thing as me.
“Make your hair fiery,” I say and demonstrate.
A second later, she’s a dead ringer for me.
“Excellent.” Napoleon gleefully rubs his small hands together. “The two decoy twins will openly go for the big target by air, while the camouflaged ones can travel on foot—as it should be easier to get lost in the sea of infantry.”
“The twins shouldn’t use their powers either,” Asha—who’s really Kojo—says. “If Phobetor doesn’t realize you’re dreamwalkers, the camouflage will be that much better.”
Maxwell nods approvingly. “It’s a much better plan than when my wife and I tried to defeat Phobetor. Maybe you will actually succeed.”
“We’d better get started,” Kojo—who’s really Asha—says. “At any moment, someone can kill us in the real world.”
As if to confirm her words, one of the Escapists poofs out of existence, and with him, a small army of dream constructs as well.
My chest tightens. “It must’ve been the orcs. They’re still on the loose on the Escapist side of Soma.”
“It’s time then,” Maxwell says. “Get in position.”
We do our best, but due to the size of our army, this takes a while.
“Let’s arm the troops,” Napoleon says.
“Guns won’t work,” Maxwell says. “Bows and arrows might, and something like a ballista, but the most effective will be close-range weapons, like swords, axes, and machetes.”
That makes sense, at least given my own experience with the subdreams.
After a quick deliberation, the dreamwalkers among us arm anyone who needs it, then manifest weapons for themselves.
I end up with a perfectly balanced katana on my back and a bow and arrow in my hands. My sister (as Kojo) manifests herself a crossbow and a sword that’s a copy of the ones we use on Soma.
When all the preparations are complete, Maxwell comes over to where camouflaged Asha and I stand among the non-dreamwalkers.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask him. “You’ve been free all these years…”
Maxwell nods, face taut. “Farewell.”
With that, his face muscles go slack, and his posture softens, as if he’s removed the weight of the world from his shoulders.
The dessert-themed environment around us is replaced with that of the subdream, with the magma sky above and the black ocean below.
Like a bolt of lightning, a tendril of magma strikes Maxwell’s head. Then it swirls and grows until it looks like a tornado of fire. From his eyes streams a fiery light, forming a strange hologram in the air as if the eyes were some weird movie projectors.
It’s a representation of a brain, I realize, staring at the hologram in shock. His?
At first, the brain is a healthy pink, but then fire spreads through it, taking over the neurons. At the same time, an army of subdream creatures appears in the distance in front of us—a million times more frightening now that they’re their usual size.
Behind them, far in the distance is Phobetor, his beautiful face both terrifying and unreadable as the fire consumes the rest of the hologram brain.
An inhuman wail escapes Maxwell’s lips—and just like that, my father disappears.
Chapter Thirty
“Zombies, attack!” Napoleon screams from his position in the back.
With a slight eyeroll, Rowan gestures at the monster horde, and her zombies charge.
There’s a second of eerie silence, and then the zombies and the subdream creatures clash.
Now one can hear body parts getting ripped off, tentacles slashed, and mandibles broken—and fountains of sticky green goop and blood float on top of the black water like macabre modern art.
“Make more zombies,” Napoleon orders when the first wave is all but gone—after barely destroying one percent of the enemy army.
The other dreamwalkers make more corpses, but my sister and I abstain so as not to reveal our powers.
This second group of zombies charges, but we’re on the radar of the subdream monsters now.